Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Timothy L. Fort is executive director of the Institute for Corporate Responsibility, coordinator of The Peace Through Commerce Program, and Lindner-Gambal Professor of Business Ethics at George Washington University.

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PROPHETS, PROFITS, AND PEACE

Yale University Press

Contents

Acknowledgments....................................................................ixPart I. Tied Up in NotsChapter 1. Globalization's Flashpoints.............................................3Chapter 2. Religion's Good, Bad, and Ugly Sides....................................29Chapter 3. Business's Credibility Problem..........................................56Part II. Corporate Instruments of PeaceChapter 4. Whose Religion? Which Spirituality?.....................................87Chapter 5. Religious Republicanism and Right-Sized Communities.....................117Chapter 6. The Company of Strangers................................................149Notes..............................................................................177Index..............................................................................199

Chapter One

Several years ago, a colleague posed a question to me via e-mail: Did I really think that multinational corporations offered the best hope for a revitalization of spirituality worldwide? I was puzzled by the question because I had never argued that corporations might provide such a tonic. My colleague, though, had read an article in which I argued that corporate leaders could better accommodate religious preferences and respect religious reasons for making decisions in business. I had argued that whether managers liked it or not, religious belief was a fact of life and that in a global environment, responding to that fact was important. My colleague, however, misconstrued my argument and thought it a bit, well, daffy that corporations would be in the vanguard of spiritual revitalization. To his credit, he checked with me first about what I had proposed. Unfortunately for him, my answer robbed him of a foil against which he could make an argument.

My colleague's question, however, keeps coming back in my mind: Might corporations be a constructive force for spirituality? As business currently is structured and motivated, it is hard to see how corporations would foster a spirituality sensitive to the needs of a variety of corporate stakeholders. That's true for a full-blown stakeholder model that suggests that managers consider the impact of their actions on any constituent. Such a model seems idealistic and impossible. Even limiting the possible stakeholder group to employees seems to be a stretch for a capitalism ready to terminate employees as costly "labor inputs" rather than see workers as flesh-and-blood spiritual beings. Yet the possibility of corporations fostering spirituality provides the opportunity for a thought experiment: What would a corporate-led-or at least corporate-encouraged-spiritual renaissance look like?

Religion and business have had an uneasy relationship throughout history. Religious belief may sanction economic activity, but it may also condemn it. Followers of Confucius and readers of Luke would have good reason to be highly suspicious about the merits of integrating profit seeking and virtue. On the other hand, the insights of Arjuna or Abraham could see material blessings as divine blessing. The relationship between money and virtue tends to be ambivalent.

Yet there may be curiosity, even thirst, among managers for an understanding of religion. In the international business-ethics class I taught for nearly ten years, I provided an introductory survey of the major world religious traditions (Hinduism, Buddhism, Chinese thought-both Confucianism and Taoism-Judaism, Christianity, and Islam). I was always amazed at just how curious students, MBA students mind you, were about comparative religion. Many colleagues told me that my course was impossible, that fistfights would break out. Students were a little more reasonable. I never once had anything but respectful dialogue among sincerely curious MBA students thirsting to understand the religious dimensions of cultural differences.

Maybe the reason for the students' interest is that religion is all too often buttoned in "do-nots," and so they never get a chance to learn about different faith traditions. Don't talk about it. Keep it quiet. It's private and personal. Don't say anything about anyone else's religion either. Don't make it part of your work life. It's separate. Compartmentalize, don't integrate. I'll have some things to say about these views-not much of them good-but even if one thinks that "nots" are good ideas, they aren't very realistic. Religion begs to be public, not private. If you believed that you had had an insight into the will of the creator of the universe, why wouldn't you want to share it? Globalization brings with it its own set of complications. It forces people of different religions to bump up into each other. Where once a Midwestern Protestant might never have been exposed to a Japanese Shintoist, now a Mitsubishi manufacturing plant in Normal, Illinois, can make things decidedly un-normal. Many positive experiences may result from such encounters. So too-as in the Mitsubishi example-can a flurry of sexual harassment lawsuits, as cultural norms collide. The friction in such an encounter is likely to pale, however, next to the friction that results when a Muslim sees a wholly different understanding of the role of women, freedom, and sexual mores being introduced to his country. In those kinds of instances, the believer may well feel that Allah himself is under attack. These examples, keep in mind, do not come from governmental or political sources-they come from business. Like it or not, business is in the business of finding markets, and what it finds there and who it comes into contact with may not be receptive to the ways of life that come with globalization. And so corporations do end up encountering religious sensitivities, even when they may not expect to do so.

In the short term, a corporation that is not prepared for the importance and variety of beliefs can run into workplace-discrimination lawsuits, marketing disasters, cultural resentment, and even illegalities. These short-term confrontations require business managers to have far more refined knowledge of world religions than they currently possess. Ignoring religion and spirituality simply camouflages or defers the tension. Moreover, the evolutionary propensity of human beings to embrace spirituality suggests currents of conflict that will not resolve themselves any time soon. No manner of economic logic will turn human beings into nonspiritual beings.

In the long term, how might business integrate spirituality into corporate affairs? How can spirituality exemplified by, but not limited to, traditional faiths contribute to the production of high-quality goods and services? How might the workplace be constructed to provide human beings with a spiritual connection to their work? How could corporations do so without engendering the kinds of religious animosities that frequently arise when religions interact? Are there goals that differing religions might embrace within a corporate context? Or perhaps most importantly, even if corporations do not directly foster religious and spiritual expression, could business practices be implemented that would create the kind of peaceful atmosphere in which constructive dialogue among spiritual traditions could proceed?

This book addresses these kinds of issues. In this book, I...